by Dan Simmons
"You mumbled something," said Amrita as she emerged from the bathroom.
"Just trying to get you to hurry up," I said and pulled a green knit shirt and tan slacks from the closet and closed the door.
We made arrangements for a cab to take us to the airport at 4:45 A.M. and then we turned in early. I lay there for hours, watching the silhouettes of furniture slowly materialize as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.
It would have been an understatement to say that I felt dissatisfied with myself. I lay there in the moist Calcutta night and realized that my actions during the entire time I'd been in the city had been either pointless or hesitant or both. Half the time I had behaved like a brainless tourist, and the other half I had let the locals treat me like one. What the hell was I going to write about? How had I let a city frighten me for no real reason? Fear . . . nameless, asinine fear . . . had controlled my reactions more than any attempt at logic.
Krishna. That insane son of a bitch. What is the gun for? I tried to convince myself that the present of the gun was another one of Krishna's senseless, melodramatic gestures, but what if it was part of some elaborate scam? What if he contracted the police and told them that the American was carrying an illegal firearm? I sat up in bed, my skin clammy. No. How the hell could that benefit Krishna? Are handguns illegal in Calcutta? For all I knew, Calcutta was the home office of the N.R.A.
Sometime before midnight I arose and turned on the tiny table lamp. Amrita stirred but did not wake. Victoria was asleep with her rump raised under the light blanket. The catches on the briefcase made a soft click in the silence.
The pages were yellowed, tattered, and strewn about the inside of the briefcase, but they were also numbered with bold strokes of a fountain pen and it took me only minutes to set them in order. There were over five hundred pages, and it made for a heavy stack of poetry. I smiled ruefully as I thought of any American magazine editor being confronted with five hundred pages of verse.
There was no cover page, no title, no cover letter, and no author's name on the pages. If I hadn't know that the massive work was purported to have been written by M. Das, there would have been no way to guess from the manuscript.
The first page looked like a poor carbon copy. I leaned closer to the light and began reading.
And the demon Mahishasura
Came forth from its vile pit,
Summoning its vast army to it,
And Devi, Bhavani, Katyayani;
Parvati in her many robes,
Bid Siva farewell and rode forth
To do final battle with her foes.
Several more stanzas of this rough verse painted a grisly picture of the demon Mahishasura, a powerful, malevolent thing which threatened even the gods. Then, on page 3, the meter and "voice" changed drastically. I translated a scrawled marginal notation as Kãlidãsa: Kumarãmbhava 400 A.D. new trans.
A fearful flock of evil birds
Ready for the joy of eating the army of demons
Flew over the host of the gods,
And clouded the sun.
Suddenly monstrous serpents, as black as powdered soot,
scattering poison from their upraised heads,
Frightful in form,
Appeared in the path of Parvati.
The sun put on a ghastly robe
Of great and terrible snakes, curling together,
As if to mark his joy
At the death of god or demon.
I yawned. "A fearful flock of evil birds." God help me when I give this to Chet Morrow. Nothing could help me if I brought this as my "new Das epic" to Abe Bronstein. I skimmed through several pages of similar turgid verse. The only reason I didn't put it down then was a vague curiosity as to how Parvati was going to beat the apparently invincible Demon Mahishasura. Stanza after stanza described the opening of the battle between the gods and demons. It was vintage Homer via Rod McKuen.
Lighting heaven from end to end
With flames crashing all around,
With an awful crash, rending the heart with terror,
A thunderbolt fell from a cloudless sky.
The host of the foe was jostled together.
The great elephants stumbled, the horses fell,
And all the footmen clung together in fear,
As the earth trembled and the ocean rose
To shake the mountains.
And, before the host of the foes of the gods,
Dogs lifted their muzzles to gaze on the sun,
Then howling together with cries that rent the eardrums,
Wretchedly slunk away.
I could identify with that. Still, I continued reading. Things looked bad for the goddess Parvati. Even with the assistance of the great god Siva, she could not best the mighty Mahishasura. Parvati was reborn as the warrioress Durga, ten hands brandishing weapons of battle. Millennia passed as the struggle progressed, but Mahishasura could not be conquered.
And before the very disc of the sun
Jackals brayed harshly together,
As though eager fiercely to lap the blood
Of the mightiest of the gods, fallen in battle.
The gods retreated from the field to review their options. Mere mortals petitioned them not to abandon the earth to the less than tender mercies of Mahishasura. A grim decision was made. The will of all the gods was bent to dark purpose. From Durga's forehead leaped a goddess more demon than divine. She was power incarnate, violence personified, unfettered even by the bonds of time which held other gods and mere men in check. She strode the heavens wrapped in darkness deeper than night, casting fear into the hearts of even the deities who had brought her forth.
She was called to battle. She accepted the call. But before opposing Mahishasura and the rampaging legions of demons, she demanded her sacrifice. And it was a terrible one. From every town and village on the young earth, men and women, children and elders, virgins and depraved were brought before the hungry goddess. Das's marginal note, only just decipherable, read: Bhavabhuti Malatimadhava.
Now wake the terrors of the place, beset
With crowding and malignant fiends; the flames
From funeral pyres scarce lend their sullen light
Clogged with fleshy prey to dissipate
The fearful gloom that hems them in. Pale ghosts
Spirit with foul goblins, and their dissonant mirth
In shrill resplendent shrieks is echoed round.
All hail the Age of Kali.
The Age of Kali has begun.
All hail the Age of Kali.
The Song of Kali now is sung.
That would have been enough for one night, but the next line kept me in my chair. I blinked and read on.
To: Central Construction Office
From: I. A. Topf and Sons, Erfurt
Subject: Crematoria 2 and 3
We acknowledge receipt of your order
For five triple furnaces
Including two electric elevators For raising the corpses
And one emergency elevator.
A practical installation for stoking coal
Was also ordered
And one for transporting ashes.
We guarantee the effectiveness
Of the furnaces and ovens mentioned,
As well as their durability,
The use of the best material And our faultless workmanship.
Awaiting you further word,
We will be at your service,
A. Topf and Sons,
Erfurt
And then, without transition, the style reverted to the fifth-century sambhava.
The sky poured down torrents of red-hot ashes,
With which were mixed blood and human bones,
Till the flaming ends of heaven were filled with smoke
And bore the dull hue of the neck of an ass.
Hail, hail! Camunda-Kali, Mighty Goddess, hail!
We glorify thy sport, when in the dance
That fills the court of Siva wit
h delight,
Thy foot descending spurns the earthly globe.
The darkness which hides and robes thee, to thy steps
Swings to and fro: the whirling talons rend
The crescent on thy brow; from the torn orb
The trickling nectar falls, and every skull
That gems thy necklace laughs with horrid life;
The Age of Kali has begun; thy Song can now be sung.
All this was mere prelude as the poem unfolded like some dark flower. Das's strong poetic voice would appear occasionally, only to fade and be replaced by a classic Veda or a piece of news raised from archives or the banal tones of journalism. But the song was the same.
For ages beyond time, the gods conspired to contain this black power they had created. It was circumscribed, propitiated, and hidden in the pantheon, but its essential nature could not be denied. It alone — she alone — grew in strength as other divinities faded from mortal memory, for she alone embodied the dark underside of an essentially benign universe — a universe whose reality had been forged through the millennia by the consciousness of gods and men alike.
But she was not the product of consciousness. She was the focus and residue of all the atavistic urges and actions which ten thousand years of conscious strivings had hoped to put behind.
The poem unfolded through countless small stories, anecdotes, and folk tales. All had the indefinable taste of truth to them. Each story reflected a rip in the sense-deafening fabric of reality, a rip through which the Song of Kali could be faintly heard. People, places, and points in time became conduits, holes through which powerful energies poured.
In this century the Song of Kali had become a chorus. The smoke of sacrifice rose to the clouded dwelling place of Kali, and the goddess awoke to hear her song.
Page after page. Sometimes entire lines were gibberish, as if typed out by someone using fists on the keys. Other times, whole pages of scribbled English were indecipherable. Fragments of Sanskrit and Bengali interrupted clear passages and crawled up the margins. But random images remained.
— A whore on Sudder Street murdered her lover and greedily devoured his body in the name of love. The Age of Kali has begun.
— Screams are torn from the dead bellies of the slaughtered millions of our modem age; a chorus of outrage from the mass graves which fertilize our century. The Song of Kali now is sung.
— The silhouettes of children playing etched permanently on a shattered wall when the bomb flash instantaneously scorched the concrete black. The Age of Kali has begun.
— The father waited patiently for the last of his four daughters to come home from school. Gently he placed the revolver to her temple, fired twice, and placed her warm body next to those of her mother and sisters. The police find him crooning a soft lullaby to the silent forms. The Song of Kali now is sung.
I quit with only another hundred pages left to read. My eyes had been shutting of their own accord, and twice I'd awakened to find my chin on my chest. I clumsily stuffed the manuscript in the briefcase and checked my watch on the dresser.
It was 3:45 A.M. In a few minutes the alarm would go off and we would have to get ready for the ride to the airport. The flight home, counting the London layover, would be a twenty-eight-hour marathon.
I groaned with exhaustion and crawled into bed next to Amrita. For the first time, the room seemed pleasantly cool. I pulled up the sheet and closed my eyes for just a few minutes. A few minutes to doze before the alarm went off and we had to get dressed.
Just a few minutes.
I awake elsewhere. Someone has carried me here. It is dark but I have no trouble knowing where I am.
It is the Kali Temple.
The goddess stands before me. Her foot is raised over empty air. All four of her hands are empty. I cannot see her face because I am lying on the floor to one side of the idol.
I am not afraid.
I realize that I am naked. It does not matter. There is a rush mat under me and it is cool against my skin. A few candles illuminate the statue. The air smells of musk and incense. Somewhere men's high voices chant softly. Or perhaps it is only the sound of the moving water. It is not important.
The idol moves.
Kali turns her head and looks at me.
I feel only wonderment. I marvel at her beauty. Her face is oval, perfect, flushed. Her lips are full and moist. She smiles at me.
I stand. My bare feet feel the parallel weave of the mat. A breeze sends a shiver up my bare abdomen and belly.
Kali stirs herself. Fingers move. Her arms bend and balance her. Her foot comes down on the pedestal and she stands lightly on both legs. Her luminous eyes never leave mine.
I close my eyelids, but vision persists. I see the soft light on her flesh. Her breasts are high, full, heavy with promise. The broad nipples rise from the soft circles of their areolae. Her waist is high and impossibly narrow, widening to full hips made to cradle a man's thrusting pelvis. Her lower belly is a soft, protruding crescent, throwing shadow into the pubic darkness below. The dancer's thighs do not touch, but curve sensuously inward at their juncture. Her feet are tiny and high-arched. Bracelets circle her ankles. They jingle as she moves. Her legs part and I can see the folds in the triangle of shadow; the soft, inward-curving cleft.
My penis stirs, hardens, and rises stiffly into the night air. My scrotum pulls tighter as I feel the power flow through me and center there.
Kali lightly steps down from her pedestal. Her necklace clicks softly, the bracelets on her ankles jingle faintly, and her bare soles make soft, fleshy sounds on the stone floor.
She is five paces from me. Her arms move in silhouette, sensuous reeds weaving to an unfelt breeze. Her whole body sways to the pulsing music-beat of the lapping river and her left knee rises, rises, until it touches the elbow or her cocked arm. A woman scent rises from her perfumed flesh and enfolds me.
I want to go to her, but I cannot move. My pounding heart fills my chest with the drumbeat of the chanting. My hips begin to move of their own accord, thrusting involuntarily. All of my consciousness is centered at the base of my throbbing penis.
Kali swings her left leg around and down.
She steps toward me. Her anklets tinkle.
Unnala-nabhi-pamke-ruha sings the river, and I understand it perfectly.
Her four arms sway in a silent dance. Fingers curl, touch fingertips, move gracefully through the sweet air toward me. Her breasts bob together heavily.
Victory to the face of the Daughter of the Mountain.
She takes another step forward. Her fingers sway, caress my cheek, glance lightly against my shoulder. Her head is thrown back, eyes half closed with passion. I see the perfection of her features, the flushed cheeks and trembling mouth.
Kamakhya?
Iva yenavabhati Sambhur'api
Jayati purusayitayas' tadananam ' Saila-kanyayah
Kali's next step brings her arms around me. Her long hair flows down over her shoulders like rivulets on a soft hillside. Her glowing skin is lightly perfumed, and sweat glistens in the tender valley between her breasts. Two hands hold my upper arms while a third softly caresses my cheek. Her other hand moves upward to gently cup my testicles. Her tapered fingers move up the length of my stiff penis, curve lightly around the glans.
I am Sambhu-Siva appearing as Visnu
The lotus and its stalk rise from my navel
I cannot stifle a moan. My erection touches the cusp of her belly. She looks down, and then her beautiful eyes turn up wantonly at me through heavy lashes. The wiry softness of her mons veneris moves against me, withdraws, comes again.
Finally I can move. My arms immediately go around her while she encloses me. Soft breasts flatten against me. Hands slide up and down my back. Her right leg rises, crooks itself around my hip, fingers guide, and she mounts me. Her ankles clasp beneath my thrusting buttocks.
Kali, Kali, balo, bhai
The chanting fills the world with the rhythm of our movement. Her
warmth scalds me. She opens her mouth wetly against my neck, slides to find my tongue. I grip her, lift her. Breasts move across my chest on a cushion of sweat. My feet are arching, my calves straining in the effort to strike more deeply inside Kali.
The universe focuses on a circle of flame growing in me, rising in me, exploding through me.
I am Siva
Kali, Kali balo bhai
